Everyone who goes to the movies are dazzled by the special effects offered in today’s big budget Hollywood films. Directors like Robert Rodriguez and George Lucas are in love with them, especially a relatively “recent” SFX development called Chroma Keying or Blue Screen. And yes, I know that “technically” using Blue Screen has been around a very long time, and I believe was used in the original Superman movie, but work with my basic premise here. The technology has only been available for the “common” man/woman for the last decade.
Anyway; the technology, cost of using it and awareness of it has come a long way since then. Now thanks to a small company called Serious Magic, and their amazing little application – “Ultra 2”, you can make your own version of “Sin City” or an Episode III for less than $1,000.Sure a lot more work and money went into creating these two block busters, but the main technology used to create them was using a higher end Chroma Key set up.
For those of you who don’t know Chroma Keying and Blue Screening is the process of creating virtual backgrounds for your actors. For example Rodriguez’s “Sin City” was done entirely “virtually.” All of the actors were in a large Green Screen studio and all of Frank Miller’s background Art was added later.
